Montana State Rep Favors Giving “Recruiting” Gays 10 Years In Jail

Montana State Representative Ken Peterson says anti-gay laws should stay on the books, because, while he recognizes it’s legal to be gay in private, public is a different matter.

He’s one of the folks who led the charge to block a bill that would’ve removed Montana’s sodomy laws from its books, keeping them up to date with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter. Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Peterson doesn’t care what happened in the high court’s 2003 Lawrence v Texas case, or even the Montana Supreme Court’s 1997 decision in Gryczan v. State of Montana. Because, argues Peterson, it should still be illegal for gays to 1) act gay in public; and 2) recruit straights into the lifestyle. Yes, really.

The Missoula Independent reports:

According to Peterson, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, there are at least two prosecutable offenses—felonies punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. One is the “recruitment” of non-gays. “Homosexuals can’t go out into the heterosexual community and try to recruit people, or try to enlist them in homosexual acts,” Peterson says. He provides an example: “‘Here, young man, your hormones are raging. Let’s go in this bedroom, and we’ll engage in some homosexual acts. You’ll find you like it.'” Peterson hasn’t actually seen this happen, he says, because “I don’t associate with that group of people at all… I’ve associated with mainstream people all my life.”

The other offense, in Peterson’s legal opinion, is the public display of homosexuality, since he believes the Supreme Court’s decision only applies to private acts behind closed doors. Being gay in public, he says, is a wholly different matter:

“In my mind, if they were engaging in acts in public that could be construed as homosexual, it would violate that statute. It has to be more than affection. It has to be overt homosexual acts of some kind or another… If kissing goes to that extent, yes. If it’s more than that, yes.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.